China – 1986 (G&B Automated Grinding Wheel Symposium)
1986 was a big year for me. That year, I was both on the top of the “great wall” of China and “Kilimanjaro” in Tanzania Africa. It is probably a short list of people who can say that. That year I was employed as a “Control Engineer” for G&B Automated and was to speak at the Chinese Grinding Wheel Symposium in ZhengZou China. The company flew our team over 1st class and allowed us to site see for a week before the event. Our trip included both ZhengZou (industrial city at the time) and Beijing. This was before the Ti-amen square incident so China was still very much under communist rule. China was also starting a new plan to become more “western”. This attached shots were made mostly with my newly purchased Nikon F3 with a (60-300mm) zoom and the Lecia M3. The trip was in very early spring, so the trees were bare and with a major air pollution problem that China suffers from, you can see that many pictures are “gray”. The weather was sunny for the entire trip, and yet we rarely saw the sun because of the pollution.
The people of China were extremely friendly and our team felt very welcome. It was one of the safest places I have ever travelled to, (sometime you will have to ask me about the “lost” wallet story).
Two other things I remember about the trip. One is that the people of China have written records of their own families that date back 1,000 years. And secondly, the shear man power of the country with over 1 billion people is amazing.
